Out of the Puking Pan and Into the Flu-Like Fire

Whee! My Pooka is home from an almost three-week vacation on the West Coast (visiting grandparents, aunts and uncles). We picked her up at oh-dark-thirty on Sunday. I can't tell you folks how good it is to have my baby home again. Yeah, I know: She's not a baby. She's almost fourteen. But she's mine. I gave birth to her. Therefore she's my baby.

Monday I had to call in sick at work due to what I can only guess was food poisoning of some sort. It started Saturday night and lasted through Sunday; leaving me queasy and headachey on Monday. Of course I had forgotten that Hubs had to work the day shift that day, which left me to take Gytha (new car) in for scheduled maintenance.

Pooka and her long-time besty joined me in heading to the Queen City where we met up with Mum and Dad for lunch. By that point my tummy was feeling better enough to be hungry, so I had a light soup and salad. Mum and Dad found Pooka and her friend to be charming and funny (because they are), and we wound up late for our appointment because we lost track of time talking and enjoying ourselves.

We saw Dr. Colorful again (and have set up our appointments through our due date so that all but one is with him, because we all like him best). He started to revisit the Tdap (Tetanus, Diptheria and Pertussis) vaccination but Mum made it clear that she did indeed want me to get the booster. The nurse who administered it was VERY good. It felt like she prodded me with a finger and it was done.

Nugget also prodded his/her parents a bit while we waited for Dr. Colorful to come in. I laid down on the exam table and let Mum and Dad poke and press on my belly to try to get their silly baby to kick them properly. Well, Nugget seems to find his/her parents soothing, because while they did get to feel SOME movement, it was nowhere near the kicks I get when I'm trying to sleep or snuggle with Hubs. They did get to hear the heartbeat though, and the doctor declared it... Yeah, you guessed it: Perfect. My uterus is measuring at 31cm and Nugget is still in a “transverse lie” which means s/he is sideways. Not a big deal, really. Dr. Colorful mentioned that he'd like to see baby head-down by 34 weeks (2 visits from now) but I reassured him that all three of the babies I've birthed, including Pooka, were in the wrong position until about 36 weeks, at which point they went breech and then flipped into the right position; engaging at the last minute. He told Mum and Dad that at worst, we'll do an external cephalic version (where they turn the baby from the outside). I doubt it'll be necessary.

Of course, we absolutely didn't joke that perhaps the heartbeat might be a little irregular and therefore an ultrasound might be prudent. And Dr. Colorful completely refused to go ahead and fit us in for one just after I got my shot. It definitively never happened. Ever.

On the way home, my head started to pound like mad so the kiddos (who spent the duration of my OB appointment shopping in the Queen City) and I popped off at Hubs' work to have dinner while we waited for his shift to end, and I popped a Tylenol. It helped a little, and I figured that would be the end of my “Tdap side effects.” Ha ha ha ha! NO.

I woke up this morning with that telltale throbbing at the injection site; a headache the size of my hometown and joints that squealed and protested with every movement. I shouldn't have been surprised; it happens every single time. Ah well. It's temporary and fairly minor, all things considered. As of right now the headache is barely more than my head reminding me that it still exists and my joints are a little tender but I can move without cringing. The only thing that really still hurts is my arm. Piddly.

I did, however, have a brief moment of carpal tunnel-like symptoms after work today, but they seem to have abated for the time being. I'm grateful for that. I hate carpal tunnel.

Shoot? Don't Shoot?

Late post, but what can I say? Life gets in the way and sometimes blocks the brain while it’s at it.

Monday I went to the Little Hospital on the hill at 6:30 am for the usual glucose tolerance test to check me for gestational diabetes. Blech. They fed me a plastic cup full of sugary muck that tasted like over-sweetened orange soda and sent me out to the lobby to sit for an hour. Granted, the muck tastes better than it did when I had Pooka, but it still knocks me for a loop every time. Headaches, sugar buzz, then sugar crash… It’s not pleasant. I really need to get better at remembering to bring a protein-packed breakfast to eat right afterward.

I went to work for a couple hours after I finished the test – I don’t think I’ve touched on work yet this year. I was an auditor for 9+ years, and then my boss’ boss retired. Her last act regarding the auditing team was to fire my boss. Because we’re a state agency, that took long past the big boss’ retirement to actually put into action, but two months later, it did happen. Thank goodness. My boss was not a good candidate for her position. She wasn’t a good supervisor, and she just didn’t GET the process we used to audit.

Before my boss left, I sat with another coworker and talked over an idea I had regarding the whole team at large (beyond just the auditors). Basically, I wanted to restructure the whole team – combining the three major jobs and then dividing the work up by region, so that no one person was ever overwhelmed at one time, and that the work would be spread out better over the course of the year. We presented the idea to the big boss’ successor and she said we could talk about it once things slowed down a little.

Yet another team member gave her notice about a month after the idea was proposed. It wasn’t until then that my idea became truly feasible. New Big Boss got the restructuring process started with HR and proposed a raise. We’re still waiting to hear back on that part – hooray for bureaucracy – but the new job is SO much less dull than being an auditor. (I’m a Finance Analyst now, for the record.)  My old boss (not the big boss) was so far behind, even with all of my work and some of hers done, that I even ran out of stuff to make up to do. Now, with three major jobs, I’m actually busy just about every day.

Anyway; around 11:30 I headed over to the house to pick Hubs up to attend my OB appointment with me. Mum and Dad were back at the IVF Clinic for an egg retrieval cycle and monitoring, so they couldn’t make it. I got to see a doctor who’s been there since I started using the Big Hospital but whom I hadn’t yet seen due to varied schedules. We’ll call him Dr. Colorful, just because that’s what his last name makes me think.

Dr. Colorful brought a resident in with him, and we joked that Dr. Badass used to tell the other docs to bring interns and residents in to see me because I’m easy and know what they’re looking for, as far as information about the pregnancy goes. They declared me to be in good health, but I did get a stern glance for not having done the glucose tolerance test earlier. Ah well – nobody’s gonna die, and I’d know if I had gestational diabetes. Pooka’s father is diabetic, so I know what to look for (constant hunger and thirst, and constant need to use the loo beyond what’s normal even for pregnancy.)

We called Mum to let her listen to Nugget’s heartbeat over the phone, which put her over the moon. Nugget kept kicking the Doppler wand. S/he’s a pretty vehement mover. By this I mean that s/he’s still trying to break things in there, whenever s/he moves. No subtlety to this little one.

Dr. Colorful also recommended that I get a new TDAP (pertussis) vaccination. I had one back in May of last year, but the new guidance from the CDC is that women get the shot during every pregnancy as sort of a booster for the baby. Mum wasn’t excited about this – she says that vaccines during pregnancy make her nervous. She asked me to hold off until 36 weeks – all of this by text message, so I went out into the hall to find the nurse who was supposed to give me the shot. I had figured that Mum would be all for anything that ensured Nugget’s immune system, so I had told the doc to go ahead and order the shot for me that day. I went out into the hall to tell the nurse what Mum had asked, and she scurried off to find Dr. Colorful.

We called Mum again and he explained that waiting until 36 weeks was basically pointless, and that at that point we might as well not bother. His reasoning was that everyone who’s going to be dealing with Nugget regularly, postpartum, should be vaccinated. In the meantime, giving me the shot now would allow my body to begin to process the vaccine, thus developing antibodies that would be passed to Nugget through the placenta. This in turn would give Nugget a sort of immunity cushion until s/he was old enough to be given the vaccination him/herself.

The consensus became that I’ll wait until my next appointment when Mum can be there and have had some time to do her research, and we’ll revisit the vaccine discussion then. I did tell her that I got the vaccine two months before Tempest was born too, and that there were no adverse effects. We’ve had the “vax/anti-vax” discussion before, and I’m not under the impression that she’s “anti-vax” but I guess I can understand her wanting to know more before she gives the go-ahead. I did the reading last time so I’m not worried, but it’s good that she’s not just jumping forward “because the doctor said so.” I never vaccinated Pooka for chicken pox because the likelihood of contracting it again after you’ve had it is almost nil. Other than that, we all get our shots, like it or not.

I digress though. Our next appointment is July 21^st at 2:45 in the afternoon. That’ll be our 30-weeker. Welcome to the third trimester, peoples.